Universities Accord a ‘blueprint’ for higher education reform for Australia’s future

Education Minister Jason Clare says the Australian Universities Accord is going to act as a “blueprint” for higher education reform for the nation’s future. The Universities Accord contains 47 recommendations with dozens more sub-proposals with the aim of doubling the size of the sector over the next 25 years. “Under Bob Hawke and Paul Keating the number of kids finishing high school jumped from 40 per cent to almost 80 per cent, that includes a lot of us here, that was nation-changing stuff,” Mr Clare said during Question Time on Monday. “On the weekend I released the Universities Accord, a that’s a blueprint for how we reform higher education in this country for the next decade and the decade after that. “What this report says is that by the middle of this century we’ll need a workforce where 80 per cent of that workforce haven’t just finished high school, but they’ve got a TAFE qualification, or a university degree as well.”